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Standard warning. This thread assumes you have seen this episode as messages here may contain spoilers.

(Spoiler Space)

Ok, I admit it, I actually liked this one. Yes it is a rehash we have seen before. No suprise there, but
apart from the High School Hijinks at the beginning the story actually progressed in a nice manner.
I still don't like Owen and the implications of Tosh not being able to read Jack are too numerous for
me to go into at this time. And finally Tosh gets some screen time to develop, although her chatting
about Torchwood to a total stranger is far fetched.

Finally, an episode focussing on Tosh. The obligatory same sex kiss. An alien that looks like Destrii/Izzy out of the Doctor Who Magazine Eighth Doctor comic strips. A Xanadu reference... Oh, and an alien that will steal your heart... in more ways than one!

A solid thought provoking episode. We haven't seen much as far as original story lines in this series, but the last three episodes have been good. The writing/tone is a bit more mature than the first few, but it is still not living up to the hype. At least the show has gotten out of its rut.

Yes, I enjoyed this episode... I would say this is my favourite so far of the series. Though not without flaws, they were not insurmountable.

The basic premise of reading others thoughts have been explored before, and it immediately reminded me of the classic Twilight Zone episode, A Penny for Your Thoughts. In the 1961 story which had Dick York playing a character that for a period of time was able to hear other people's thoughts (just like Tosh here with the pendant)... though he discovers that people's thoughts are not always reflective of their true feelings or motives. I thought we might get a similar lesson here in this episode of Torchwood, with Tosh learning people don't always mean what they think. Perhaps she does in the end, but it was not so clearly drawn out, which is fine. I think I would have been disappointed if it followed the Zone story too much.

I predicted that she would not be able to reads Jack's thoughts... The line at the end when she makes a comparison that it was like he was dead really stung Jack... I wonder if he knows he died or not.

Wait a minute here....[grunt]...have to...dig out my...handy...patent pending..."What did I think of Torchwood" Flip chart and random plot generator...

It's a bit hefty.

Voila.

Let's see.

1) Same Sex kiss, check.
2) Who reference to placate Whovies, check.
3) The word 'shag', check.
4) Slightly dissapointing CGI, check. (Where's the Mill gone?)
5) Amusing session of team banter, check.
6) Horny alien, check.
7) some form of inter office sport, check.
8) A "what happened to the alien, that fell a bit flat", moment. ("Oh, I just shot her into the sun just off screen because we can't affor dthe mill to do a bit of fancy footwork here. Sorry, did you miss that? WHy? Oh, we were distracting you by moving onto the sex thing again."), check.
9) Domestic scene to remind audience that team are continually disjoined from reality, check.
10) Owen getting all the best lines, mostly regarding his trousers, check.
11) Smashing the 'Jack is dead' nut with a sledgehammer again, check. (Did you know, Jack is dead. What? No! Yes! Seriously. Yea.........Oh, so did I mention Jack is dead..)
12) Sucidial Ianto mutterings, check.
13) Gwen shown to be more annoying than we first realised, check.
14) Showing off bars in Cardiff, check.

I could to this with two pencils up my nose, a pair of pants on my head and by repeated saying the word 'wibble'.

[ for future reference the "What did I think of Torchwood" Flip chart and Torchwood plot generator (TM) (C) (ETC) will be on the market this Christmas along with the K9 remote controlled dog and Captain Jack (fliexible and vibrating) action figurine - essentially it's a scrabble bag with lots of bits of paper in it]

New additions to the "What did I think of Torchwood" Flip chart and Torchwood plot generator (TM) (C) to be pulled out of the bag in future episodes:
welcome. Profits will not be shared.

[Quote by: merlin_mccarley]Standard warning. This thread assumes you have seen this episode as messages here may contain spoilers.
And finally Tosh gets some screen time to develop, although her chatting
about Torchwood to a total stranger is far fetched.

The thing is that "Mary" is manipulating her, which is rather more obvious to us in the audiance.

The basic premise of reading others thoughts have been explored before, and it immediately reminded me of the classic Twilight Zone episode, A Penny for Your Thoughts. In the 1961 story which had Dick York playing a character that for a period of time was able to hear other people's thoughts (just like Tosh here with the pendant)... though he discovers that people's thoughts are not always reflective of their true feelings or motives.

The idea of being able to read other's thoughts is explicitally called a "curse" in The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There are also some similarities to this episode and the Buffy episode "Earshot".
Even more recent would be the Big Finish "Benny" story "The Kingdom of the Blind".

I have to agree in general with the comments so far - wouldn't consider it groundbreaking but for the first time it had my attention all the way through. I do feel that over the last few weeks Torchwood has drawn me in much more than it did at the beginning - but this is without doubt the best one yet.

The preview for next week looks interesting too - the return of Suzie Costello (even if only for a couple of minutes). In the UK BBC Four has been having a "Science Fiction Brittania" season which has included a repeat of the 2005 live remake of the Quatermass Experiment starring Indira Varma (Suzie) and David Tennant. It was while he started on this that David Tennant found out he'd got the role of The Doctor - which he then had to admit to Mark Gatiss who was also starring in it. This evening also saw the screening of "Random Quest" which was based on a John Wyndham short story - with no mention that of the original film based on it which starred Joan Collins !

The basic premise of reading others thoughts have been explored before, and it immediately reminded me of the classic Twilight Zone episode, A Penny for Your Thoughts. In the 1961 story which had Dick York playing a character that for a period of time was able to hear other people's thoughts (just like Tosh here with the pendant)... though he discovers that people's thoughts are not always reflective of their true feelings or motives.

The idea of being able to read other's thoughts is explicitally called a "curse" in The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There are also some similarities to this episode and the Buffy episode "Earshot".
Even more recent would be the Big Finish "Benny" story "The Kingdom of the Blind".

The scene where Tosh hears a murderer's thoughts and follows him in order to stop him is straight out of M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable with Bruce Willis.

Otherwise, I generally enjoyed this episode, but I would put it 2nd, after Small Worlds.

Absolutely the best episode of Torchwood yet. And that's not to damn it with faint praise. It was genuinely good television. This balanced approach to the cast is exactly the direction the show should go.

This is the first episode I've actually wanted to watch again.

Random notes:

Time to face facts, people. Whitehouse knows how to get emotional responses out of his audience. And he knows how to write interesting women. The two are not unrelated. And he's got an amazing ability to create alien cultures on the strength of just a few words. This is twice now we've gotten tantalizing new aliens just in the background of episodes that are really about emotional encounters. Tosh's speech in the the pub where she talks about her view on alien life in general was, to be sure, an extrapolation of a truth that travellers on this planet find out about other cultures—but as an entrée into a character we don't really know yet, it was surprisingly effective and poignant. This guy should get work in every season of DW and TW from here on out.

Best. Opening. Ever. The teaser-out line, "Do whores have prayers?" was the most appropriate use of adult language yet. Second: "Sometimes I think even that stick up your ass has a stick up its ass."

I think the similarities to the Heroes character can't really be faulted here; the shows were in production concurrently. I think we're seeing a bit of simultaneous discovery on the issue of the morality of mind-reading.

Jack was used effectively, yet with sensible economy. He was the hero that saved the day, of course, but it was brilliant to have his time limited. He was so much more effective as a mystery lurking in the background. That said, there was something about Jack's delivery in the early part of his initial encounter with Mary in the Hub that didn't play exactly right. Barrowman went for "forceful" when the script fairly screamed "casual". He was right on elsewhere, though. I especially enjoyed his end dialogue with Tosh, which some seem to have disliked. It was a very nice moment between two actors who have gotten precious little solo time together.

Loved the little drop-in reference to UNIT, and the bit of political squabbling between Jack and the PM. I hope we get an episode where Jack is summoned to 10 Downing for something.

Overall, I was glad to see Tosh emerge with the most complex character piece to date. It's always the quiet ones you need to watch out for.

"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986

I did not look at the VCR clock once while watching the episode and was disappointed when it was over (went MUCh too quick). I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Gwen telling Tosh that what Gwen and Owen is doing IS wrong, she knows it but she isn't going to stop (paraphrase, obviously). Nice to know that some where she still has a moral center, she's just choosing to ignore it as a way to work through the new experiences (doesn't excuse or condone, just makes her more human).

Also happy (again) that they have not forgotten Ianto's pain. But I would have thought it would have been obvious that the result of this episode should have been Tosh and Ianto commiserating together, not Jack playing Obi Wan / the godfather figure with all the answers. Too easy.

I had told myself that if this episode wasn't better I was going to stop watching (at least not making sure to see the show within the first 48 hours after airing). Now they've sucked me back in by making me care for a character (Tosh) besides Jack.